The present invention relates to a musical tone control apparatus, and more particularly to a musical tone control apparatus which controls a musical tone based on a bending angle (or bent angle) of each of several joints (or articulations) of human body.
Conventionally, the musical tone is generated by performing a musical instrument such as a piano, a violin and the like or by vibrating the vocal chord of human. Therefore, the conventional apparatus does not convert a human motion according to rhythm exercises and the like into the corresponding musical tone at all.
Under such circumstances, the present applicant has developed the musical tone control apparatus capable of converting the movement of each portion of human body into the musical tone (see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 108,205 whose disclosure includes the contents of Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication Nos. 63-115064, 63-132634, 63-120214, 63-132295, 63-139208, 63-96697, 63-127773, 63-132294). This apparatus comprises a detecting portion for detecting the bending angle of each joint; a grip device having the shape which can be held by a player's hand and also providing a key-on switch for designating a timing of generating the musical tone; and a main unit which inputs detection signals outputted from the detecting portion at the timing when the key-on switch is depressed (or turned on) so that the musical tone generated from a speaker can be controlled in response to the combination of inputted detection signals.
For example, a tone pitch of the musical tone is designated based on the combination of bending angles at left and right elbow joints of the player. Next, when the key-on switch at the grip device is depressed, the musical tone having the designated tone pitch is generated from the speaker. Thus, it is possible to control the musical tone in response to the movements of player's body.
However, the above-mentioned conventional musical tone control apparatus suffers the following problems because it is different from the general electronic keyboard musical instrument which simultaneously determines the key-on timing and tone pitch by a single depressing operation of a player's finger. At first, in order to raise performance speed, the player must move his elbow joints with high speed to sequentially and rapidly designate the desirable tone pitches. However, in some cases, the player depresses the key-on switch before the bending angle of elbow joint enters into an angle range for designating the next tone pitch whose musical tone is to be generated. For this reason, it is sometimes impossible to obtain the desirable tone pitch. As a result, there is a problem in that this conventional apparatus can perform only the music of relatively low technique or slow performance speed.
As other background techniques, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 63-123094 and Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open Publication No. 62-172432 are known. These two inventions can generate the musical tone in response to the finger motion. However it is difficult to control the tone color of the musical tone to be generated.